Happy Hour #6 - Androids & Aliens & The Future (Patreon)

The news dropped late Tuesday afternoon that Androids & Aliens is going to become a part of the  Starburns Audio family, a podcast network featuring Harmontown and created by Starburns Industries, the production studio behind Rick and Morty. 

How about all the links in that first sentence? See that? That's what professional podcast blogs look like (I think). It took me 25 minutes to write that sentence and you know what, it was well worth the time invested. This news is huge and I'm so happy that it's finally out there. In several of these Happy Hour posts, I've been forced to merely allude to goings on that can't yet be discussed that take up a large part of our workday. Well, this is one of them. Being able to share the news with you guys, our supporters, and talk about it (finally) is terrific.

So let's talk about it. Briefly. After all, I do need to get a pitcher of beer immediately (it's been a long week). I'm sure there are some members of the Naish that are bummed to hear there will be ads on A&A now. I get it, of course. I'm not delusional, but you should know right out of the gate that I won't be talking about putting ads onto A&A as something I'm sad about. Because I'm not. I'm also not sad that I have to stop at red lights when I choose to drive a car. Wait. I am sad about that, but I would much rather have traffic lights than not have them. Ad breaks are an inevitable part of the order and structure of a podcast network (like Starburns) that is designed to grow audiences for individual shows by exposing their listeners to content from like-minded creators. When the Starburns deal was inked, I wasn't sitting around with my head hanging, worried about ads being in our podcast. I was giddy with excitement at the thought of how many times a promo advertising A&A would be heard on other shows on Starburns Audio! How many new people can we invite into this amazing community with the help of a company like Starburns!? A hell of a lot, I think. 

Last year, Troy wrote an article about why we had initially turned down advertising opportunities. It was because the rates that are paid, by and large, for a mid-roll, host-read ad on a podcast of our size is next to nothing compared to the support we get from all of you. If the point of these Happy Hour articles is to lift the curtain a little and give you some insight into the machine behind the content we put out week to week, then this is maybe the most important nugget you could take away from this conversation: a podcast of our size does not command high prices from advertisers. It's just the reality of the market. So, knowing that ad breaks had the potential to frustrate listeners that had supported us financially, while also knowing that the income associated with those ads would not warrant, by any stretch, taking that risk from a business perspective...why join Starburns?  The short answer? We didn't join Starburns to make money on advertising. We've been down that road. Patreon is far, far better for us. We joined Starburns simply because we need to reach more people, and we can't do it alone anymore.

In 2018 we hired an ad agency to do social media marketing for us in an attempt to capture new listeners for The Glass Cannon Podcast and Androids & Aliens. It was a disaster. I've never been so frustrated and disappointed with a vendor in my life. We lost money, reached no one, and embarrassed ourselves with awful social media flubs. I found myself writing extremely long emails to higher ups at the agency explaining why we needed to be released from our guaranteed contract. Looking back, I could boil it down to one simple thing: they didn't get us. Not at all. They didn't understand the game we play, the show we produce, or the listeners we love. It was a bad call on our part (my part), because I knew they didn't get us, but thought a big ad agency could overcome that. I gambled and I lost. No surprise there. Joe's Gonna Roll.

Starburns gets us. This is a company that's bread is buttered in the comedy, sci-fi, fantasy world. They have a podcast called Beyond Yacht Rock for god's sake! If you've ever been to Glass Cannon Live! then you know that these are people that get us on an entirely different level. It's that sort of connection and understanding that's going to help us get to the next level with A&A. Word of mouth simply isn't enough right now. We need to raise the stakes, and what better way than to get our message out to people that are already listening to podcasts with our sense of humor, but have never heard of The Glass Cannon Network? It's an obvious choice in my mind, but it's not a one way street. Just as other shows will be mentioning advertisers as well as A&A, so will we be mentioning those same advertisers and other shows on the network. Those advertisers support Starburns and thus, support us, so we do our share. To do anything less would be to expect something for nothing and that's not how we do business. 

From a business standpoint, the Starburns deal is the most exciting thing to happen at the Network in quite a while. I just hope it grows our exposure. Pure and simple. 

There was a ton of other fun stuff that all happened this week! A new Patreon shirt hit the USPS and I know some were delivered to you guys. March/April is a big month for us with rewards because it's the two year anniversary of the start of the Patreon. That means all of you OGGCP folks (you know who you are), joined in those first two months and so all of your rewards come up at the same time. It's a lot of busy work and I was in the office folding, packing and shipping this week with a little help from my buddy Skid. 

There were also developments on the Emerald Spire front this week as we had a player workshop. Troy mentioned in his post on Tuesday that expanding the personalities on the network is another priority of ours for several reasons, but the obvious ones are that we need to expand perspectives beyond the six that are on weekly shows right now and if we expect to scale the business, we can't possibly have all the same people on every show. I won't go into further detail here, but it was a blast. We had a lot of laughs and it's making me more and more excited for you all to hear Emerald Spire.

As part of my Emerald Spire research, I also had an in-person meeting this week with Adam, the GM of the Order of the Amber Die! I had teased this on a previous post, but this week the meeting actually happened. We met at a rundown strip mall off of Exit 8 of the NJ Turnpike and talked Emerald Spire for over 3 hours. It was glorious. I can remember back in 2015 when we first started Giantslayer and Troy would talk of the Order of the Amber Die with reverence. The quality of their play, the ruthlessness of the GM, and the commitment to playing the game by every rule in the book was something we both could aspire to. Alas, we've never come close, but we gave it a hell of a shot. Adam is an awesome guy and it was the first of many conversations to be had (and not just about Emerald Spire). I've said too much.

Lastly, I've had two weeks of great streams on Friday mornings. The Sekiro streams have been smooth and the tech has been working They are going up on YouTube, so check them out if you have a minute. The game is incredible. More importantly, though, the Naish shows up and we just have a blast. Thank you to all of you that carve out a little time to join me on Friday mornings, it's truly awesome. If you want to check it out, I'm streaming pretty much every Friday at 10am ET on twitch.tv/theglasscannon.

That'll do it for this week, I'm off to the bar for a beer. And by "the bar for a beer", I mean the kitchen to make Gwen a piece of peanut butter toast that she'll demand like the Dowager Countess and then refuse to eat...

...like the Dowager Countess. 

Downton Abbey references are back in style now right?

Love you all. Have a great weekend!

--Joe